For bright through the tempest his own home appeared,
Ay, through leagues intervened he can see;

There's the clear, glowing hearth, and the table prepared,
And his wife with her babes at her knee;

Blest thought! how it lightens the grief-laden hour,
That those we love dearest are safe from its power!

"It snows!" cries the belle, "dear, how lucky!" and turns From her mirror to watch the flakes fall;

Like the first rose of summer, her dimpled cheek burns,
While musing on sleigh-ride and ball:

There are visions of conquests, of splendor, and mirth,
Floating over each drear winter's day;

But the tintings of hope, on this storm-beaten earth,
Will melt like the snow-flakes away:

Turn, turn thee to heaven, fair maiden, for bliss;
That world has a pure fount ne'er opened in this.

"It snows!" cries the widow, "O God!" and her sighs
Have stifled the voice of her prayer;

Its burden ye'll read in her tear-swollen eyes,
On her cheek sunk with fasting and care.
'Tis night, and her fatherless ask her for bread,

But "He gives the young ravens their food,"

And she trusts, till her dark hearth adds horror to dread,
And she lays on her last chip of wood.

Poor sufferer! that sorrow thy God only knows;
'Tis a most bitter lot to be poor when it snows!

TH

WOMAN'S INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER.

guardian of society against When man, after his inter

HE domestic fireside is the great the excesses of human passions. course with the world-where, alas! he finds so much to inflame him with a feverish anxiety for wealth and distinction - retires, at evening, to the bosom of his family, he finds there a repose for his tormenting cares. He finds something to bring him back to human sympathies. The tenderness of his wife, and the caresses

of his children, introduce a new train of softer thoughts and gentler feelings. He is reminded of what constitutes the real felicity of man; and, while his heart expands itself to the influence of the simple and intimate delights of the domestic circle, the demons of avarice and ambition, if not exorcised from his breast, at least for a time relax their grasp. How deplorable would be the consequence if all these were reversed; and woman, instead of checking the violence of these passions, were to employ her blandishments and charms to add fuel to their rage! How much wider would become the empire of guilt! What a portentous and intolerable amount would be added to the sum of the crimes and miseries of the human race!

But the influence of the female character on the virtue of man is not seen merely in restraining and softening the violence of human passions. To her is mainly committed the task of pouring into the opening mind of infancy its first impressions of duty, and of stamping on its susceptible heart the first image of its God. Who will not confess the influence of a mother in forming the heart of a child? What man is there who cannot trace the origin of many of the best maxims of his life to the lips of her who gave him birth? How wide, how lasting, how sacred is that part of woman's influence! Who that thinks of it, who that ascribes any moral effect to education, who that believes that any good may be produced, or any evil prevented by it, can need any arguments to prove the importance of the character and capacity of her who gives its earliest bias to the infant mind? Again: the Gospel reveals to us a Saviour, invested with little of that brilliant and dazzling glory with which conquest and success would array him in the eyes of proud and aspiring man; but rather as a meek and magnanimous sufferer, clothed in all the mild and passive graces, all the sympathy with human woe, all the compassion for human frailty, all the benevolent interest in human welfare, which the heart of woman is formed to love; together with all that solemn and supernatural dignity which the heart of woman is formed peculiarly to feel and to reverence. To obey the commands, and aspire to imitate the peculiar virtues of such a being, must always be more natural and easy for her than for man.

So, too, it is with that future life which the Gospel unveils, where all that is dark and doubtful in this shall be explained;

where penitence, and faith, and virtue shall be accepted; where the tear of sorrow shall be dried, the wounded bosom of bereavement be healed; where love and joy shall be unclouded and immortal. To these high and holy visions of faith, I trust that man is not always insensible; but the superior sensibility of woman, as it makes her feel more deeply the emptiness and wants of human existence here, so it makes her welcome, with more deep and ardent emotions, the glad tidings of salvation, the thought of communion with God, the hope of the purity, happiness, and peace of another and a better world.

In this peculiar susceptibility of religion in the female character, who does not discern a proof of Heaven's benignant care of the best interest of man? How wise it is that she, whose instructions and example must have so powerful an influence on the infant mind, should be formed to own and cherish the most sublime and important of truths! The vestal flame of piety, lighted up by Heaven in the breast of woman, diffuses its light and warmth over the world; and dark would be the world if it should ever be extinguished and lost.

THE BELL OF THE ATLANTIC.

The steamboat Atlantic, plying between Norwich, in Connecticut, and New York, was wrecked on an island near New London. Many of the passengers were on their way to join in the celebration of the annual Thanksgiving in New England. The bell of this boat, supported by a portion of the wreck, continued for many days and nights to toll as if in mournful requiem of the lost.

TOLL, toll, toll, thou bell by billows swung;

TOLL

And, night and day, thy warning words repeat with mourn-
ful tongue!

Toll for the queenly boat, wrecked on yon rocky shore!
Sea-weed is in her palace-halls: she rides the surge no more.

Toll for the master bold, the high-souled and the brave,
Who ruled her like a thing of life amid the crested wave!
Toll for the hardy crew, sons of the storm and blast,

Who long the tyrant ocean dared; but it vanquished them at last.

Toll for the man of God, whose hallowed voice of prayer
Rose calm above the stifled groan of that intense despair!

How precious were those tones on that sad verge of life,
Amid the fierce and freezing storm, and the mountain billows'

strife!

Toll for the lover lost to the summoned bridal-train !

Bright glows a picture on his breast beneath th' unfathomed main. One from her casement gazeth long o'er the misty sea:

He cometh not, pale maiden

- his heart is cold to thee.

Toll for the absent sire, who to his home drew near,

To bless a glad expecting group - fond wife and children dear!
They heap the blazing hearth; the festal board is spread;
But a fearful guest is at the gate: room for the pallid dead!

Toll for the loved and fair, the whelmed beneath the tide-
The broken harps around whose strings the dull sea-monsters glide!
Mother and nursling sweet, reft from their household throng;
There's bitter weeping in the nest where breathed their soul of
song.

Toll for the hearts that bleed 'neath misery's furrowing trace!
Toll for the hapless orphan left, the last of all his race!
Yea, with thy heaviest knell, from surge to rocky shore,
Toll for the living-not the dead, whose mortal woes are o'er!

Toll, toll, toll, o'er breeze and billow free,

And with thy startling lore instruct each rover of the sea:
Tell how o'er proudest joys may swift destruction sweep,
And bid him build his hopes on high-lone teacher of the deep.

HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP.

Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so He giveth His beloved sleep. - PSALM cxxvii. 1, 2.

F all the thoughts of God that are

Borne inward unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this-
"He giveth His beloved, sleep?"

What would we give to our beloved?
The hero's heart, to be unmoved;

The poet's star-tuned harp, to sweep;
The patriot's voice, to teach and rouse;
The monarch's crown, to light the brows?
"He giveth His beloved, sleep."

What do we give to our beloved?
A little faith, all undisproved;
A little dust, to over weep;
And bitter memories, to make

The whole earth blasted for our sake?
"He giveth His beloved, sleep."

"Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes say, But have no tune to charm away

Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;

But never doleful dream again

Shall break the happy slumber when "He giveth His beloved, sleep."

O Earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men, with wailing in your voices!

O delved gold! the wailer's heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God makes a silence through you all,
"And giveth His beloved, sleep."

His dews drop mutely on the hill;
His cloud above it saileth still,

Though on its slope men sow and reap.
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
"He giveth His beloved, sleep."

Ay, men may wonder when they scan
A living, thinking, feeling man,

Confirmed in such a rest to keep;
But angels say - and through the word
I think their happy smile is heard

"He giveth His beloved, sleep."